Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities, 1938
Fire at MSPCA Archive
Unfortunately, the room where the fire broke out also contained much of the MSPCA-Angell’s archives dating back to its founding in 1868. Early publications of the organization were lost in the blaze; however, staff continue to uncover salvageable items including scrapbooks and journals, some from George T. Angell, the non-profit’s founder. A listing of the historical items that have been lost is being compiled and will take several weeks to create.
Fortunately, no animals or humans were at risk from the fire. But, tragically, a significant part of our movement’s history is damaged or lost.
This speaks to the importance of such collections as the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive at North Carolina State University. Clearly, there needs to be similar archives elsewhere in the world. It’s the Grumpy Vegan’s enduring wish that his collection becomes the corpus for an animal rights archive in a British university, and is quietly working away toward accomplishing this. Please contact me if you have materials to donate and an interest in helping to make this happen. The dream is to establish an academic centre with an archive at its hub.
Posted in Organising, Thinking
Tagged Animal Protection Movement, Human-Animal Studies
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Thought for the Day
Breed, crowd, encroach, expand, expunge yourself, die out, homo called sapiens.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892-1950, Wine from These Grapes, 1934
Trinity Wholefoods in Hastings
The so-called “Livid Vegan” chastised me for not mentioning Hastings’ Trinity Wholefoods.
i notice you havn’t got a word for Trinity Wholefoods, i know they dont seem to have a web site and this maybe why, but not even a word!… scandalious…i’ve been in this town for ten years and those guys have been a god send, they’ve been here for over twenty years, rocking the vegi/vegan way…not just apearing on the scene when the media onslaught happened for all things green and organic, they’ve been around before all the poncey twats new what tofu was and that being vegan was actually good for your health and the latest fad, and before it all became yet another money making scam. i would prefere it if they were completly vegan but you cant have everything now can you…so why no word Mr?
Well, yes, it’s true. I haven’t mentioned Trinity yet because they don’t have a Web site. But the Grumpy Vegan does shop there. What’s more, it abuts the library. Anyway, I searched the Internet and found this link. Trinity reminds me of what Infinity Foods, the Brighton-based wholefoods cooperative, was like when I lived there in 1979-80.
Happy now, Livid Vegan?
Camelot for Pit Bulls?
There is a fascinating article, “Vick Case Exposes Rift Among Animal-Rights Advocates,” in today’s New York Times, which outlines the difference in approach between PETA and Best Friends toward the rehabilitation of Michael Vick’s ex-fighting pit bulls.
The divide surfaced in the aftermath of the Vick trial when the judge, Henry Hudson, ordered Vick to pay $928,073 in restitution for the “past, present and long-term care of all the dogs.” The court allocated $5,000 for dogs deemed likely to be adopted, and $18,275 for each of the dogs going into longer-term or lifetime sanctuary care.
PETA argued that dogs trained for fighting should be destroyed because they are unsafe and unserviceable. PETA said the Vick money would have been better spent spaying and neutering, as well as providing care for more suitable and less well-known adoption candidates.
The folks at Best Friends Animal Society argued that the fighting dogs had been forced to lead brutal lives and should not receive death sentences.
And …
Ingrid Newkirk, the founder and chief executive of PETA, called Best Friends “an expensive Camelot.”
“These are celebrity dogs,” she said this week in a telephone interview. “That isn’t a good use of money, it isn’t the best uses of time. The Vick dogs are the least likely candidates for success. It’s just a much more exciting story that comes with money attached to it.”
The founder of Best Friends, Michael Mountain, said PETA, for all its high-profile advocacy, is boxed in by an outdated philosophy.
“I don’t think PETA’s argument is with us, I think it’s with themselves,” he said from Utah in a telephone interview. “It’s really difficult as an animal-rights, animal-protection, animal-whatever-you-want-to-call-it organization to explain away the fact that pretty much all the animals you rescue, you kill. It doesn’t make logical sense; it doesn’t make emotional sense.”
The writer (and I presume regular NYT Sports Writer) concludes
Under Newkirk’s direction, PETA has launched many important initiatives — including shining a light on the brutal dogfighting industry. But she is on the wrong side of this pit-bull issue. If a dog can be rehabilitated, rehabilitate; if a life can be saved, save it.
Even if it’s taking place in Camelot.
Fascinating.
Thought for the Day
The global environmental crisis will improve our lives by offering us a planet-wide crisis of the soul, an opportunity to mature as a species. We are, as these things go, a fairly adolescent creature, with prowess all out of proportion to our wisdom.
Stephanie Mills, Utne Reader, Nov/Dec 1989
